EPUBLICEYE AND MINDSET NETWIRE TEAM UP TO HELP SMALL BUSINESSES GET MEDIA RELATIONS RIGHT AND MINIMIZE "NEWS-SPAM"
LOS ANGELES, CA -- (MINDSET NETWIRE) -- August 16, 2000 -- ePublicEye.com (www.epubliceye.com) the largest aggregator of customer satisfaction data on small and medium sized e-businesses, today announced it has partnered with Mindset Netwire (www.mindsetnetwire.com), to provide a new B2B offering that will help its 15,000 e-business members learn the right way and wrong way to work successfully with the press. By helping small businesses get media relations right, the alliance aims to reduce news spam and preserve the symbiotic relationship between businesses and the press.
A legion of "boiler room" marketing groups have sprung up in the past year, pushing press releases and similar PR forms as the new answer to website and small business promotion. So media outlets are overrun with irrelevant announcements. With their emphasis on making money rather than providing real service to small businesses, such quick-buck outfits neither monitor what they are sending out nor target to whom the "announcements" are sent. Even some large businesses have been guilty of "news spam" - sending out daily announcements which amount to nothing more than saying "the lights are still on." Dot-com companies like MP3.com and others have recently been criticized in the e-business press for this practice.
The relationship between business and the media is symbiotic because each needs the other for their own audience and customers. The media rely on legitimate and newsworthy press announcements to fill pages (or air-time), while businesses rely on the media to announce new product/service launches, public company mergers and financial performance, and other business-related events.
ePublicEye and Mindset will provide education and tools to help small business owners to create only relevant news, and to highly target such news releases to only those outlets which might utilize it.
Specifically, under this partnership, Mindset and EpublicEye will:
* provide PR guidelines for small business
* provide on-line checklists and press release templates
* offer professional writing services
* offer media campaign development
* offer media relations services.
"We are committed to enabling small business through the most useful and 'small business friendly' support services," said Errol Smith, President and founder of ePublicEye. "Many new e-businesses desperately need help in this area, and Mindset is uniquely qualified to reconcile the needs of small businesses with the needs of media editors. This partnership is a win-win-win relationship."
"Part of our goal is to help cut down on the clutter of irrelevant content filling up all e-mail boxes and fax machines of the media," said Christopher Simmons, President and founder of Mindset Netwire, a division of Mindset. "This clutter makes it more difficult for legitimate businesses to 'get the word out' because real news is getting buried by 'news spam.' By providing the right information and tools to the 15,000 active e-business members of ePublicEye, we believe we can build a sense of trust between our members and the media because we will be educating these business owners on how to honestly and successfully utilize the media."
"As one of our first steps in this program, we now provide a journalist resource on our site called Mindset MediaSelect, which allows writers and editors to only receive content on the specific topics they cover. Journalists can edit their preference themselves at any time, and privacy is fully protected."
About ePublicEye.com
ePublicEye.com is the only global e-business rating service that allows buyers to rate e-businesses for reliability, privacy and customer satisfaction in 5 languages. Since 1996, ePublicEye.com has maintained a focus on building confidence between consumers and small to mid-sized Internet businesses. Pioneers in the use of consumer feedback to promote safer e-commerce, ePublicEye.com is the largest aggregator of customer satisfaction data in this market segment, trusted by thousands of small to mid-sized merchants to continually survey their customers. As the only company offering e-business ratings in French, German, Spanish, Chinese and English, ePublicEye.com is uniquely positioned as an enabler of small to mid sized e-businesses worldwide.
About Mindset Netwire
Mindset Netwire(tm) is an online news bureau service which offers the services of professional journalists and magazine editors for copy writing, press release writing, and Web site content editing. Mindset provides press release dissemination, strategic planning, and media relations, and adheres to the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Code of Ethics. Using the MediaSelect system, journalists can specify the exact kind of announcements to receive from Mindset Netwire, by topic. The Mindset Netwire Web site is located at www.MindsetNetwire.com -- the MediaSelect service is located at www.MindsetNetwire.com/distribution/mlm/
About Mindset
Mindset(tm) is a privately-held company founded in 1983 to provide advertising, marketing, PR, design and multimedia services to small business. In 1995 Mindset began offering Internet services including e-commerce, Web site design, content development, audio/video conversion and Web hosting. Mindset currently serves hundreds of companies worldwide including Cygnus Business Media, FindWhat.com, Imageologists Inc., Jackstreet.com, Morgan Road Records, V-Lite Video Corp., and Westco Marketing Inc. The Mindset(tm) Web site is located at www.MindsetCommunications.com
TRADEMARKS
Mindset, Mindset Netwire, DotComMojo, and Send2Press are trademarks of Mindset. ePublicEye, JackStreet.com and ePublicEye.com are trademarks of ePublicEye. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of respective mark holder.
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